


exhale

by snapspark



Series: distant thunder [2]
Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:40:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8259865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snapspark/pseuds/snapspark
Summary: “If there is more to life than this,” she said, and because she had come to know and believed in him, “if there is, Ryu Hyun could find it.”Zen tells her about his past darkness.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of smooth reading I've named MC 'Kaeul', which means autumn and is in fact a real name.

 

 

The only thing that got her through the 6 PM commute was the thought that she could give up now, but she could also give up at the end of the train ride in a tub of fresh and ice-cold water.

Kaeul is ready to do just this, but as she kicks off her sandals by the door she catches sight of Hyun spinning around on the computer chair, the tablet on his lap playing something reflected on his reading glasses.

They notice each other at the same time. Hyun pauses the video, but Kaeul only dips down for a quick ‘hi’ and peck on the way straight to the shower.

July in Seoul is brutal. Hyun’s basement room is a sweet, cool relief earned over the grating cold of winter, but that’s a done deal for them, no complaints. _Zen_ has become enough of a name that his director made him rent a car to get around town, and he’s been doing his best to drive Kaeul to her classes the days he can, but the walk home is hell. In the winter there’s heating, and going out into the neighborhood cafe for something warm to eat. July makes them lethargic and want to stay home all day, like moles.

Hyun’s doing his first time skimming of a new script, a local reproduction of _Les Misérables_ , the songs rewritten into Korean. He’s been watching some English runs to help. He glances down…

The tablet screen had dimmed to black, video paused for too long. When Hyun’s eyes focus again, he realizes he’s been staring at his reflection for quite a while. 

Something jolts through him. Makes his backbone shake and curl, like a scorpion.

Before he identifies it—the bathroom door opens. The muted hubbub of steam and vent, drains and droplets, sweet shampoo, busts into the hollow living room, runs over the hush in one great gust. Kaeul comes out of the shower and comes back in a soft grey t-shirt, the print of little bears on the front faded, and light and loose pajama pants. She was always so soft in juxtaposition to everything else in the apartment, and Hyun felt now, more than ever, that she infused spaces with that softness everywhere she went.

She starts to set down her laptop beside him, but he pulls her backwards into his lap in the computer chair, then sets the tablet on her legs and watches the video with his chin on her shoulder.

Kaeul turns to look at him, and after a moment chuckles. She goes back to her work on the table. “You’re going a little cross-eyed, you know.” 

Hyun answers by turning to kiss her on the cheek. Then he closes his eyes and buries his face in her neck.

Some days in very rare hysterics Ryu Hyun finds himself entirely ugly. Not that he sees in the mirror something morbidly unattractive or unrealistically distorted, but sometimes if he stares at his own reflection too long, Hyun starts to see a face acutely opposite of the kind of beautiful features he wished he had.

Those were things like, Yoosung’s lips, which curl sweetly at the corners when he smiles, gives off an inviting kind of innocence loveliness. Or even Jumin’s thin but stern-set looking mouth that seem to emphasize the few words he speaks. Or Jaehee’s sharp eyes above her gently-sloped nose, closing into pretty and peaceful crescents when she sleeps.

It’s easy to shake it off in front of someone else, this kind of invasive thought. In the locker room, frowning at his own reflection until someone comes along to laugh at him, and he laughs back. Some part of him must recognize the absurdity. Another part wants to go back for a better glance, so he can come another step closer to knowing what his parents had been forced to look at everyday for sixteen years. 

It took years to stop taking it to heart every time he met someone and found they were merely seeing through him. Sometimes even now the feeling was so eerily familiar that he wondered if he was still as empty as he was at 15, if he hadn’t managed to ignite a singular spark for his own name. There are better people to spend time on, and so he learned the art of agreeing—when to laugh and nod and sway a sponsor with some gracious, self-deprecating narcissism. If that was all they wanted to see, that was all they deserved.

Over the years Hyun has gained a reticent, introverted edge. Before his time he had heard of idols sleeping in subway stations, polishing shoes to feed themselves during training years, and he consoled himself believing just like them, his day will also come. Living in box sized rooms on work days, in youth hostels when he traveled for auditions, numbingly long lines for the communal showers, the old man on a stool swatting flies with his bamboo fan, sizing him up every morning as he bought the same breakfast from the convenience store. When he believed all this was temporary, when he remembered this was better than anything he could have become if he hadn’t left behind his dirty past, all the days began to blend together, until piece by piece his life begins to upgrade—when there’s heating in the rooms, when he sings in clean hotel showers—then it hits him how far he’s come.

Bits of that time never leave. Kaeul sees it sometimes in the way he knows how to tie a stack of newspapers in a rush, or his mechanical efficiency at dish washing, his immaculate customer service voice, or how he knows how fix almost everything that could be broken in this house. For years he lived with an underlying fear that people whose hands he shook firmly might see through the dazzling image of his stage name, but not anymore. “Gimme your customer service voice,” Kaeul says nowadays, and Hyun breaks out the persona of his old self like he’s merely acting a character: “Hi there welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order? I’m sorry, what did you say you wanted? ‘Pretty boy’?…”

Before Kaeul there was acting, before acting there was fitness, before that, bike gangs. Midnight rendezvous on the bridge, thundering down highways with arms around his waist, snuffing out cigs in empty beer cans, chasing the sunrise for an answer. They would ride out their frustration, all kids like him with their own ineffable pains, until they found themselves in some other state or some mountains. Directionless anger, converted from loneliness and sadness. They were powerless, inconsolable.

He blinks when a hand runs gently through his hair.

He opens his eyes, and she’s staring pensively ahead at nothing, like she’s absorbed some of the heaviness of his emotions onto herself. Hyun tries suddenly to recall when the sound of typing has stopped. It scares him to see her like this, at times it feels she’s withdrawing to a place Hyun can’t reach. He didn’t mean to burden the air between them. Hyun trusts that one day he will understand, and that when he does he will love her more deeply than he’s ever been able to, but from that moment he swore to himself that he will do his best for her forever.

She catches his eyes, her face slowly blooms into a contented smile.

“I’m sorry. I won’t make us sad again.” He smiles back, even though it aches.

“It’s okay.” She leans into his lips, and nothing more is said.

 

* * *

 

Hands gripping his shoulders, kneeling over his lap, Kaeul watches down the slope of her front as her lover’s fingers slip beneath the loose band of her cotton pants, pulls it down just enough to expose the triangle of her groin, her glistening cunt shuddering under his gaze.

Hyun gathers all the wetness with the tips of his fingers and pulls his hand back to taste. Kaeul closes her eyes and thinks, _If he doesn’t finger me right now I’ll lose it._

He slides two fingers in at once, red eyes locked onto hers like a spell, his lips parted on the start of a guttural moan. She barely gives him time before her hips are fucking into his hand, moaning as she enjoys him, her chest bouncing enough that the pushed up shirt tumbles down the slope of her breasts.

She reaches for his cock, but the hand on her waist moves to stop her.

They sit, panting. Kaeul’s sure Hyun can feel her pulse from inside her. The thought drives her crazy. _What’s the matter_ , she thinks.

“Hold on tight, love.”

Hyun lifts them off the chair, with her arms tight around him she can feel the strength of his muscles taking every bit of her weight along.

They make out until they’re breathless, at the edge of the bed. When she lets him go their shirtless chests are pressed together. Hyun smiles like he’s trying to tell her things with his eyes that she can’t hear. He falls back slowly, their fingers intertwined, Kaeul watching from above as his hair and eyes catch the evening light, as if set ablaze, gold and lucent.

Back against the window, haloed in light, she is. There is heat in their hands, his chest, their crotches pressed together.

Hyun’s throat constricts. Neither of them could have dreamed of this. In this lonely life this strange city, in this house sprawled atop the soft duvet of their bed, studying every motion of each other’s naked forms, the setting sun from the high window of his basement casting the shapes of their bodies on the walls. Kaeul arching languidly into his touch, yielding her self in full trust, their breathing heavy and steady. It reminds him of the last words of his girlfriend six years ago when they broke up on the eve of the gang’s collapse. 

“If there is more to life than this,” she said, and because she had come to know and believed in him, “if there is, Ryu Hyun could find it.”

This is it. Had to be.

“I love you…So much.” He can’t open his eyes. “I love you, Kaeul.”

She brushes the corners of his eyes, and he opens them. She smiles at him because she also doesn’t know how to say any of it.

  

* * *

 

 They’re lying around afterwards when Hyun chuckles suddenly, looking bashful, eyes gleaming like he’s bubbling up in preparation to share his feelings, the way he’s never afraid to. “Can I tell you something?” 

She’s biting her lip from smiling too wide. “Yeah. Of course.”

A soft kiss first. “So you know that before…in my past, I used to be in a dark place.”

She nods.

“And at that time being in the darkness had its own perks. Like…I would meet a lot of people like me back then who had nothing to give and nothing to lose, so being friends with them felt really genuine, and we all got each other’s backs.

“But we all knew we weren’t meant to be here. They all either came from good backgrounds or had big dreams and futures. I always felt like everyone could be saved, if we just found the courage to face and get through what we were most scared of. And I never stopped dreaming…of being on stage, how it would feel to be in the spotlight, to live that way.”

He takes a deep breath. She’s gone still.

“Being here with you now, I feel like I’ve finally reached that light. Back in those days I never could’ve dreamed I would ever be allowed to be this happy. And I know you’re not so pure like that either, I’m glad you’re not, but to me you are still so bright and beautiful, and I’d never want to sully your light with the dirt from my hands. I never want to go back.”

Hyun looks up, from where he was starting at their hands. Kaeul is momentarily speechless.

 “Why would you think that?” She whispers, holding his face now. “Ryu Hyun. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Wow.” He’s trying to hide the fact that he’s taken aback, but she was feeling uncharacteristically honest, now smug. “Wow. Shit, you too? I thought I was my own biggest fan—”

Their lips mash together, kissing deep into each other’s mouths. Her hand slides into Hyun’s hair, their legs laced tightly. Somewhere in the back of her mind the same thought as always knocks, resurfacing in full force when Hyun’s hand brings her flush against him, and she’s sure this time he can see it flicker on her face, like the unmistakable miss of a clock’s tick.

_For how long?_

They had saved each other’s lives, but maybe it was all they had.

“Kaeul?”

 _Why me?_ She wants to ask. _Wasn’t choosing me just a coincidence_? _There are others who are better suited._ But she’s acutely aware that saying these things drives an unnecessary wall between them that might have otherwise never come to exist.

“What’s wrong?”

Kaeul shakes her head, lost for words. Too many all at once. She doesn’t know how to start.

“I don’t know what, but you keep thinking things you don’t mean,” Hyun frowns.

That makes her laugh. “Yeah? Why not?”

“If you did you would tell me, right? I think you’re waiting until you’re sure, but I know you won’t be.”

“You know I won’t be.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause I’m a big catch. Nobody would just give me up. I’m confident.”

They’re trying hard not to laugh, both of them.

“And because I need you. And I need you to need me too.”

Her heart thumps hard. She will never get used this part of him—like a nail being hammered in, a little bit more every time.

 Zen leans into the soft slope of her chest with his eyes closed. She hugs him close. “My superstar…”

 “Forget everyone else, Kaeul. Forget them all.” He sits up. Their eyes lock. “Just answer this honestly.”

 She nods up at him.

 "Do you see me as someone with as much to give you as you have to give me?”

 “Of course.”

 “Then do you see yourself as someone with as much to give me as I’m willing to give you?”

 It chokes her up. “…Yes. I do. I would.” So much, she would. She wants to give him only the best of herself, even if all she has for now is love.

                      

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because.........I want to believe we are all capable of being loved like this (someday)


End file.
